


War was hard, this is harder

by red_bb



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bonding, Pre- Stolen Century
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 04:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12269148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_bb/pseuds/red_bb
Summary: The Starblaster crew all had their ways of coping with the trauma of their long battle with the Hunger, but their main coping mechanism was eachother. After the events at the end of the Stolen Century arc, Lucretia has to figure out how to deal with her emotions alone.





	War was hard, this is harder

The problem with stealing your friends’ coping mechanisms, Lucretia realised a little too late, was that when you thought you’d found the perfect place to practise them, your friend had probably found it first.

She tried to sneak away, but Magnus was already smiling at her, having spotted her in the dojo doorway.

“Hail and well met, Director!” he called from beneath a ludicrously large dumbbell on the far side of the room.

“You can just say “hello,” Magnus,” she said, glad he couldn’t see her hiding a smile at this distance. “I apologise, I didn’t realise this place would be occupied at, ah, 2am.”

He hefted the dumbbell back onto the rack and turned to face her. “A bunch of people live here who are the only ones on the planet to remember gigantic wars and that the things that caused them, like _exist_ , and you didn’t think there’d be anyone here workin’ off a little late night angst?”

This time she didn’t bother hiding her smile as she replied “That’s fair enough,” then remembered herself and hastily said “Anyway, I’m sorry for disturbing you-“

“Wait no, hold on-“

“It’s late, I should-“

“Lucretia.”

Her name from his lips stopped her in her tracks. “I-yes?”

“You came here for a reason, right?” He ran his hand through his hair, looking thoughtful. “And I don’t know what that is-heck, I’m not even gonna ask, but-maybe I can help.”

Her smile was sad this time as she said “That’s very kind of you Magnus, but I’m not really in the mood for talking right now.”

“Who said anything about talking?” She saw him stoop and throw something at her. She caught it reflexively, and closer inspection revealed it to be the padding Bureau employees used for sparring. “I think we should just beat eachother up til we’re too tired to feel shit.”

She blinked. “That…could work.”

* * *

 

She had worried that she might be out of practise.

As the Director of the Bureau, she had a certain image to maintain. People had to see her as stoic, in control, _aloof_ , if she was to keep her distance. And distance was essential to stop suspicion. Lucretia was many things, but a good liar she was not. So she feigned indifference, kept prolonged interactions (especially with her Reclaimers) to a minimum, and above all fought to keep up a carefully curated façade of appearing calm and collected at all times. Which of course meant that even when she woke up shaking and covered in sweat, she was careful to cast invisibility on herself before sneaking out the dojo to beat the shit out of some punching bags, and even then the dojo was a last resort; getting caught in fantasy sneakers and a fantasy t-shirt would do nothing for her image. So though in her heyday she had very much been able to hold her own against Magnus, given the advantages afforded by her magic, she approached him with a certain amount of trepidation.

She needn’t have worried.

“So, who taught you to fight?” he queried as he levelled blows at her, attempting to get through her guard for the thirteenth time. “Because no offense, but I sort of expected to have to hold back a lot more, given your, uh-“

Her eyes flashed mischievously, and he only had a second to think “oh, shi-“ before he was on his back, with Madame Director grinning down at him. “Given my advanced age and decrepit physique?”

He grinned sheepishly, laying back on the floor to catch his breath. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it like that, but…yeah. Yeah, that is kinda what I meant.”

Lucretia allowed herself a small grin back at him, which was immediately wiped off her face as he asked again “So who trained you? Come on Director, I gotta know. I just got my ass handed to me by my aged boss.”

“Magnus, I am not _aged_ , I’m barely twenty years older than you, and frankly this line of questioning is inappropriate.”

“Lucreeeetia.”

“You know you-you can’t keep calling me that, I am your boss.”

“Lucreeeeeeeetia.”

“Magnus, I must insist-“

“Creeeeetia come on, we were bonding!”

Magnus pulled his best puppy face, looking absolutely ridiculous as he looked up at her and she was suddenly hit with how tired she was of fighting him and his goddamned rustic hospitality.

The truth was, if Magnus had been at his peak, with all his memories and training intact, he would have beaten her-and _had_ beaten her, many times. But as things stood, she was a powerful warlock with over a century’s experience under her belt, and while he had been probably the best fighter this world had ever seen, now he was almost down to the level he had been when she first met him. And she had done that to him, she had _taken_ that from him.

So it was guilt (or maybe loneliness) that made her do what she did next.

She flopped down next to him, telling herself that if necessary she could just erase anything she said from his memory (ignoring the part of herself that was telling her that she couldn’t do that, she’d done enough, hurt him enough)-

“My family taught me.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “So, was your dad like, a tank? Because you sure know how to use a guy’s weight against him, that was pretty impressive.”

She gave him a small smile. “My…brother, I suppose. My father- “an image of Davenport and Merle flashed in her mind’s eye- “My…fathers…were pretty small in stature, but they could still hold their own; you would think they had a century of training under their belts, the way they fought.” She laughed to herself at her little joke as Magnus looked at her quizzically. “So, they taught me how to fight larger opponents, and my brother _was_ the larger opponent. And we used to spar when-“

She broke off and he finished: “When you needed to let off steam?”

She couldn’t bring herself to do more than nod, closing her eyes.

She felt him nudge her playfully, and opened her eyes and looked over at him as he joked “Well you just managed to flip the best fighter on the moon, so you guys must have steamed like the damn Rockport Limited.”

She laughed, and for a moment she could almost pretend this was just another sparring session on the deck of the Starblaster.

_She and Magnus, practising manoeuvres that eventually devolve into a no-holds-barred battle to knock the other to the ground, are in the center of the deck, laughing and trading insults as they battle. Merle, who is supposedly impartial, sits to the side of the deck keeping track of who has the most successes while simultaneously trying to beat Davenport in chess. Magnus and Lucretia have exhausted themselves (plus Lucretia’s last spell hit Magnus a little too hard), but when they beg Merle to heal them so they could settle this once and for all, he simply chuckles and erects a barrier around them so they don’t accidentally crash into the board. Lup immediately declares this a fight to the death and starts pelting them with food, with Barry as her aid, while Taako starts casting spells left and right, changing the fighter he favours on a whim as they start calling out more and more outlandish promises and compliments to gain his favour._

“Madame Director?”

She blinked, and suddenly she wasn’t surrounded by her family any more. She hadn’t been for a long time.

But there was Magnus, and he looked concerned, and so familiar, yet so different from the friend she remembered.

“Hey look, I’m sorry. I’ve lost family too and I-it sucks. A bunch. So like, I’m sorry I kept pushing.”

_If anyone has the right to push, it’s you_ , she thought.

“It’s-it’s perfectly alright Magnus.” She sighed and leaned back, bracing herself on her palms as she stared at the ceiling so she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “In truth, I have no right to complain, not really. My family are, for the most part, safe and happy, which is more than many on this moon can say. But they don’t…”

“They don’t know who you are.”

She met his eyes with a start, and they crinkled as he smiled sadly. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out. If they were inoculated they’d live on the moon with you. You wiped them so you could save the world without putting them in danger.”

She felt a spike of guilt in the pit of her stomach as she looked at him, robbed of a century of his life and still in danger, still fighting for her without knowing why, and swallowed before saying “Nothing quite so noble as that, but…yes, they don’t remember me. They may never do, but it’s better this way.” _I have to believe that._

“If I’d had the choice between wiping my family and losing them, there’d be no question which I’d pick. You’re right, I don’t know why you did it, but I don’t know if it matters, really. When-” he took a deep, shuddering breath, and Lucretia thought she saw him glance at his left ring finger. “When you find people you care about, you have to protect them. Everything else is secondary.” He seemed to remember where he was and shake himself out of it, before beaming a slightly forced looking smile in her direction and saying “Anyway, family doesn’t always have to be blood. Once you save the world you can give them back their memories, but til then you have like twenty pains in your ass to take care of who’d follow you into the jaws of death.” She gawped at him, and he shrugged, adding simply “I mean, you pay us all but hey, potato potato, right?”

He clapped her on the shoulder and levered himself into a standing position, yawning. “Thanks for the workout, Creesh. I’d better head to bed before this devolves into us getting drunk and whining about our tragic backstories, yeah?”

She cleared her throat. “That would be-highly unprofessional, as is this new nickname. Magnus-“

He waved a hand dismissively as he strode towards the door. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I won’t say anything to the boys about this. Not my story to tell. Night.”

He wouldn’t, she realised. If she had had this kind of run in with one of her other members she might have been tempted to feed it to the baby voidfish. But for someone who like to present a big dumb exterior to the world, Magnus had always known what to keep to himself. It was one of the things she had always liked about his company; privacy on the Starblaster had been rare, but you knew where you stood with Magnus.

When she saw him the next day, he called out “Hail and well met, Madame Director!” as usual, and if it weren’t for the entry in her journal she might have thought she had dreamt the whole encounter.

And if he noticed that her eyes had been wetter than usual, he never mentioned it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading, this is the first fanfiction I've written since I was 10 and I'm very rusty, so if you wanted to leave feedback I'd really appreciate it.  
> I want the other chapters to explore other dynamics than Magnus/Lucretia, but we'll see what the future holds! Sorry if there are mistakes, I'm posting this unbeted at 1am (because otherwise I'll lose my nerve XD).  
> Lucretia is wonderful and so is Magnus and anyone who thinks otherwise can fight me.


End file.
